Browsing by Author "Duarte, Ana Amorim"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- The use of knowledge management in the Portuguese footwear industryPublication . Duarte, Ana Amorim; Amaral, Paulo Cardoso doThe goal of this thesis is to show if knowledge management is competitively present in the strategies of the top managers of the Portuguese Footwear Industry, contributing potentially to the creation of competitive advantages. With literature review findings and its discussion, a framework is proposed, to allow the identification of knowledge management by companies, with a strategic focus. This framework builds on the characteristics of three strategic models: Resource-Based View, Knowledge-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities, which can be applied to assess if knowledge is being managed strategically. Using this framework, the interview’s key questions are defined in order to determine if the interviewed companies are managing knowledge strategically, and in which strategic model best explains the companies’ strategies. With seven open questions, interviews to the managers of six of the most historic and important footwear factories in the city of São João da Madeira, known as the “Portuguese Footwear Capital”, are conducted. Crossing the answers with the framework built, made it possible to realize that the six companies’ strategic model fits in Dynamic Capabilities framework. Of the three models, Dynamic Capabilities is the one that gathers the more characteristics of the strategies followed by the interviewed companies, since all companies are very flexible, fast in reaching the market with new innovations and trends. This work concludes that knowledge management is applied strategically, and an apparent enabler of the competitiveness of these companies within a fast changing industry. This work also concludes that these essentially family-owned firms ensure, through knowledge management, that the expertise and knowledge acquired with years of experience does not get lost with the personnel changes and is applied to improve its value chain, to make them more innovative and maintain their competitiveness in the footwear market.